This blog tracks a ten year epic of kick-starting a whole writing career, with spies and thrillers and now, vampires. I cover the creative process, stuff that blows up, history, philosophy, and theology. If you like any or all of the above, you'll like this one. We talk about comic books, movies, music, and writing. Usually, all at the same time.

I am not certain how much of this is my own personal opinion and how much of it is a critique of how sex scenes tend to be inflicted on the reader.

One of my major problems is the OSS, or the Obligatory Sex Scene.

In the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child novel Mount Dragon, our protagonists, after having found shelter and water in the middle of the desert, after nearly dying from thirst, while on the run from a nutcase with a gun.... are so happy they start having sex...

Huh? What the Hell?

The OSS I just mentioned is quick. If it's longer than half a page, I'd be surprised. But it was just dropped into the middle of the book, and was so jarring it broke the pace. It had been a nice, solid thriller, our heroes on the run from a psychotic killer with a rifle, and then.... they're stopping to have sex? Really?

Looking at it objectively, what is the point of an OSS?

“Physical intimacy shows the the relationship involved has gone to another level and has thus impacted the characters.” Perfectly true, but does that necessitate a five page sex scene? Or even a page? If one wanted to tell the reader that, yes, two people slept together, I can do that right now: “X and Y fell into bed, kissing passionately as they stripped each other's clothes. They then turned off the lights and hoped they wouldn't wake the neighbors.”

Done. Two lines and a bit of smart ass can carry something a long way.

“Things can happen during the scene that are relevant to the rest of the novel.” True, but rarely does it necessitate going into intimate details. In fact, I would suggest that anything interesting that happened could be covered in the next chapter. “On reflection, s/he noticed something odd while lying on his/her back. S/he didn't really notice it at the time, but now that it's quiet.....”

Done.

Exceptions can be made to this rule, obviously. If the couple rolls off of the bed as someone walks into the room, be it with room service or with a gun, then that is a useful detail.

There are moments when character can be served, strangely enough. I've seen sex scenes done well. I don't mean the sex scene in the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, where he dwells on a nice neat serial killer, his girlfriend comes in, starts kissing and disrobing him, and the next line is, literally, “How did that happen?” I mean a sex scene, rating R to NC-17.

John Ringo's “Paladin of Shadows” series (Ghost, Kildar, etc), has sex scenes and nudity. However, the point of the hero, nicknamed Ghost, is that he is not a “nice guy;” he hangs out in strip clubs, and some of his contacts are strippers... it's rather amusing reading a scene where a stripper is informing him of pertinent information during the course of her duties.

The sex scenes themselves are surprisingly thought out. The first novel, Ghost, is a series of vignettes. The second vignette is described as "two-thirds bondage porn and deep sea fishing, and who knows which is worse" (I'm paraphrasing there). Before the sex scenes take up whole chapters, the character Ghost has a discussion with the two young ladies he's dealing with... and their parents. The conversation that follows is one part dissertation on bondage subcultures, and five parts comedy routine.

After that, you can skip read, unless you really want to learn more about leather goods than you ever really wanted to.

So, here we have someone who makes sex funny without it being gaudy. In fact, the amount of thought put into his later sex scenes shows a lot of character, intelligence, and humor.

Even then, are they necessary? Surprisingly enough, some are, and two are crucial to the stories they show up in. Almost all of them impact the characters in some way. And almost all of these scenes can be entertaining for reasons that are anything but sexual.

Why Ghost does what he does (and I don't mean sexual maneuvers or positions) tells the reader more about the character than a hundred pages of sex scenes from any given novelist....

Laurell K. Hamilton, I'm looking at you.

Laurell K. Hamilton created a novel series about Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. It was a nice, solid series, set in St. Louis, with a well-constructed, detailed world, where vampires were public figures, werewolves are treated like HIV cases in the 80s, crosses work against vampires, and demons aren't the actor in a suit you see on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

For nine novels, the series went well. There was sexuality here and there (a major character was a French vampire, after all), but it never really got in the way of the story. By book seven and eight, the main character was sleeping with both a vampire and a werewolf, but the OSS's were few and far between, and they were easily skipped by turning a page. Quite painless, overall.

After book #9, Obsidian Butterfly, I was warned off several novels because they opened with a hundred pages of vampire rituals of who gets to have sex with who. I went back for book #15, because it featured the return of Hamilton's best, scariest character: a mild mannered, white-bread fellow named Edward, a mercenary who started hunting vampires because humans were too easy.

However, I had to skip a hundred and fifty pages of the novel. It was one, long and drawn out OSS. Not a menage a trois, but a bisexual sextet among Vampires and were-creatures. Much of the rest of the book had pages of Anita Blake defending her sex life. “The lady dost protest too much.”

When the author herself was asked about the overabundance of sex during a Barnes and Noble interview, Hamilton's best defense was that “I only get complaints from men. I had two reviewers tell me that they're disturbed that a woman is writing this sort of stuff. ”

Ahem...

Dear Madam. Hamilton: I get disturbed with John Ringo writing about a man and two coeds on a boat with bondage gear. For the love of all that's Holy, what makes you think that a bi-sexual sextet with were-furries would go over any better, no matter who or what you were? So, you're going to defend yourself against criticism with some kind of strange faux-feminism based off of two reviewers? How about "I want more plot than sex scene," are you going to blame that on me being male? Really? Really?

Again, I'll go back to John Ringo, only a different series -- the Council Wars. One short story is seriously NC-17, and reading through it, I would be hard-pressed to see how it could be written otherwise. With Hamilton's novels, I could skip over a hundred pages and not miss a single plot point. That's screwed up.

Make it sextets with were-furries, they're even worse.

2. “I want a Heroine not an excuse for sex.”

As I said, inA Pius Man, there are no sex scenes. There are moments of physical intimacy off screen, that the reader doesn't see, but that's about it.

Can I write a sex scene? Sure, they're easy. I've gotten requests from lady friends of mine for erotica (don't ask, long story).

But are they necessary? No.

Did I need intimate details to add to the plot, the character, or anything related to the story? No.

Frankly, I think a PG-13 novel sometimes requires more skill than an NC-17 rated. I find that sex sequences are a cheat, sort of like premium cable—just because you can use four letter words doesn't mean you have to write them into every single line.

The character of Giovanni Figlia is happily married with two children; I can leave him and his wife alone and move on to something plot related while they're busy in bed.

Maureen McGrail is out of her own country, single, and is usually too busy to stop, slow down, and make out with a random hero.

Scott Murphy and Manana Shushurin have just met; while they have an intimate moment, everything that interests me happens later.

Just because an author can throw in a sex scene doesn't mean s/he must do so. Doing sex scenes well takes skill, and making them relevant takes talent; most people don't have it. Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer had several moments where our heroine's sex life really was going to get people killed. Sherrilyn Kenyon, a ROMANCE NOVELIST, wrote at least one book where the LACK of sex was a key plot point, and another where intimacy between the hero and heroine was surprisingly crucial to the story. Ringo was mentioned above.

6 comments:

I found you through a sad puppies related post, and just went down the rabbit hole following your links for a while. Huzzah to this stance, I agree wholeheartedly. A similar issue to the OSS is the obligatory profanity. It comes across as forced. Profanity, like sex, in writing can detract from the story if it's not handled correctly.

I always thought sex scenes to be important parts of books just as they are important parts to life. Understanding that I decided to include a few where they are warranted, mostly in my third book because my protagonist marries. That being said, I always found the road to intimacy and the aftermath to be where the real story lies so I never get graphic. I take you to where it begins and pick up where it ends. I think this is successful for two reasons. Everyone has their own idea about what sex is. Ones filthy kink will be anothers boring vanilla romp. I make sure you know my characters well enough so you can take your own imagination and fill it in. They do what the reader wants them to do. Second reason is, I have kids, kids pick up books and read. I don't want anyone elses kid picking up my book reading something they shouldn't be reading. Like me when I was 13. My first introduction to sex in literature came from the Pirate, by Harold Robbins. Magical uses of sex and cocaine. Not good.

Oh, yes, I've had a couple of readers complain that there wasn't enough sex in my cozy mystery novels (there wasn't ANY, which I suppose was the point.) "It's only natural," they whine. Well, so is going to the bathroom, but I certainly don't feel the need to catalog the number of times my characters do THAT, much less follow them in and give all the details (although I once read a mystery where the main character stopped to go to the bathroom after she looked out the window to see a body lying in her backyard that her sister had awakened her to tell her about. "Lots of people have to go to bathroom when they first wake up," the author explained when I told her that the detail was distracting and didn't need to be in the story.)

Some readers have compared it to having the characters stop to eat during the course of the story. Yes, I do sometimes go into detail about their meals but that is part and parcel of the genre in which I write and it is possible to convey information relevant to the story during dinnertime or coffee break conversation. A fellow author from my publishing house tried to do the "conversation-to-convey-crucial-information" during a sex scene. Back and forth, guy and gal exchanged "as you know, Bob" lines while removing their clothes. It took them two pages to finally get into bed. I don't remember ever finishing the book.

Please, by all means, leave a message below. I welcome any and all comments. However, language that could not make it to network television will result in your comment being deleted. I don';t like saying it, but prior events have shown me that I need to. Thanks.